Journalist Carl Bernstein said President Barack Obama is no Richard Nixon on Monday, and he would know.

“It’s terrible,” Bernstein said of the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “Outrageous. Heads ought to roll. Simple as that. … From what we know so far, some high-up heads.”

But Bernstein said that conservatives who are eager to equate the IRS scandal to Watergate should hold their horses.

While the Nixon-era IRS investigated his political enemies and subjected them to audits, it did so at the direction of the president and his aides. No evidence has emerged linking Obama or the White House to the IRS scandal.

“In the Nixon White House, we heard the president of the United States on tape saying ‘Use the IRS to get back on our enemies,” said Bernstein, whose reporting helped lead to Nixon’s eventual resignation. “We know a lot about President Obama, and I think the idea that he would want the IRS used for retribution — we have no evidence of any such thing.”

The IRS apologized on Friday for targeting conservative groups’ applications for additional scrutiny.

Bernstein said both the IRS targeting and the administration’s handling of the Benghazi attack that left four diplomats dead need to be viewed in the context of a more polarized and divided Washington.

“The notion that this is back to some idea of criminality, conservatives can’t trust this and liberals can’t trust that, I think we got to put this back into the realm of good government,” Bernstein said later in the show. “It’s not about conservatives. It’s not about liberals. We have a problem in Washington that nothing is getting done because we cast everything in this hyperideological way, including Pavlovian responses that Democrats make because they think republicans are accusing them of something and vice-versa.”